exam

I was about to sit for an exam. I arrived early and found my notes, desperately studying as I was anxious to perform well. I read and reread the information while other people arrived and took their places at desks that were lined up in neat rows in the room. No one else seemed to be as concerned as I felt about the exam. Finally, the supervisor arrived, handed out the examination papers and started the clock. I read the first question again and again but the words seemed not to fit together and by the time I read the end of the sentence I had forgotten what the beginning of the sentence said. This occurred with every question in the four page test. I felt incredibly scattered and could not decipher the meaning of any of the questions or remember the answers that I had studied. Time was up. Other people handed in their papers but I waited, holding onto mine. For some reason, now that the clock had stopped and the pressure was lifted, I immediately felt clear and calm. My supervisor asked me for my paper and I asked for just a few minutes while I completed it as I had not answered a single question. She allowed it and I began the paper, writing as fast as I could, but this time with certainty. It turned out that every answer was there in the question - all I needed to do was see it. I completed the paper knowing that I had done my best.

flower power

I was driving my car through a park next to a school. The grounds were vast and green and, when I came to it, the car park was nearly empty. I parked my car with ease and stepped out to see where I was and what was happening. People began to arrive - old classmates from primary school dressed up for a special occasion. I realised that it was a school reunion and that a dance was to take place in the assembly area. I was not dressed appropriately so I decided to walk the short distance to my house to have a shower and get dressed. I did not want to take the car as I feared that the car park would be full by the time I returned. I walked down the street, hearing the sounds of music and laughter in the distance as more people arrived. As I crossed the road toward my house, I paused on the median strip where there was a wonderful camellia bush growing. The flowers were white and pink with soft open petals and upright stamen. I wanted one to put in my hair. The lady who tended the bush came out of her house and crossed over to me, to see what I was doing. I asked her if I could have a flower for my hair and she found the prettiest of all the flowers and cut it for me. I was not sure what I would have to wear at the dance but I felt lovely because I had a beautiful flower.

old woman

B and I were in the house of an elderly relative who was sometimes my great grandmother and sometimes B's relative. We were staying with her for a short time and while we were there we were helping her around the house. I felt some guilt as I realised how much she normally had to cope with on her own. At one point we were standing in a dark hallway. I looked up at B and the old woman and screamed. I am not sure why. The woman fainted and I felt awful. I lay beside her and talked her through it and then, when she was ready to stand, I stood with her, using my body to lever her up from the floor to an upright position. I needed to put something in the kitchen rubbish bin so I walked into the kitchen and over to the fireplace where the bin was placed. It was overflowing. Food scraps, flower stalks and all sorts of rubbish were piled on the floor around the bin. It looked as though plates had been scraped directly into the open boxes and bags that spilled around the bin. B and I started to clean up. I found a huge orange garbage bag and shook it open, filling it with air. I held it while B started to throw the rubbish inside. We were nearly finished when the bottom of the bag split open and the rubbish tipped out, all of the floor. We would have to begin again.

Later, B and I were browsing in the cosmetics department of a store. Again we were with an elderly female relative. We tested fragrances and admired the colours of the makeup. Afterwards, we travelled down a lift to the street. I had the feeling that we were in a different part of the world, that we had crossed a river or a sea and now we were aiming to arrive somewhere. The urban street stretched up before us, incredibly steep. We could not see over the peak but I imagined that the street continued to dip and rise over the hills beyond. The day grew dark and from the top of the hill, water began to trickle down the gutters. The trickle grew and soon water was rushing like a stream and then a river down the hill. We waded as far as we could go and then succumbed to the water, holding onto poles to anchor ourselves and ducking under the rising water as it flowed over our heads. Night fell and finally the water began to subside. We slept for a while and woke in the morning with water still ankle deep but the threat was gone. Only B and I were there. A car pulled up beside us and there, lying on the back seat, was our elderly relative. I was glad that she was safe but I was worried about her. She was asleep with tube in her nose to help her breathe.

bomb and haunted street

I was in Paddington in Brisbane and somehow I became involved with a man who was planning an attack on the neighbourhood. I didn't much like him and felt anxious in his presence. At some point, I was with my friend F, walking up a completely deserted Caxton Street, when the man ran past, threw something at me and ran away. I caught what he threw and then looked down to see that I was holding a bomb. I didn't know what to do or if it was real. A vast drain opened before me underneath a terrace house so I threw the bomb down the drain. I had no idea if it would explode but I hoped that I had averted a disaster. Nothing happened. I walked over and looked through the window of the house above the drain and it turned out to be a restaurant. It was Christmas day and a family I know was dining in the front room of the restaurant. The mother, who used to be my singing teacher, saw me and came out to say hello. Through the glass I could see the rest of the family enjoying each others' company. The mother emerged from the wooden doored entrance and I noticed the lovely floral fabric of the loose dress that she was wearing and her beautiful red hair. We hugged one another warmly and walked across the street. I wanted to get the rest of the family out of the building, just in case the bomb blew up, but for some reason I could not speak of the bomb openly. The woman and I went into a shop across the road. We opened the glass swinging door, sounding a bell, and slipped into the quiet shop. Its shelves were lined with old books and dust. There was no one in attendance. After a while, we went back out and I noticed that that my singing teacher friend was holding a small dog with a funny shaped snout. She said that she was glad that I had given her the dog whilst we were in the shop but I knew I had not given it to her. I then realised that the street was haunted. We crossed back over the road and she passed the dog to me. I stroked his silky hair and nursed him whilst we went into a vintage shop. I was still concerned about the bomb somewhere in the drain below the restaurant where her family were eating a Christmas lunch, but I followed her into the shop.

singing

I was sitting around a large table with about twenty others, gathered in a meeting room somewhere. Each of us was to sing a song; we were auditioning for something. I wanted to sing and was excited about my turn approaching, but I was nervous as I couldn't think of a song to which I knew all the words. While others were singing, I trawled my memory, searching for a suitable song that I knew well enough to perform.

peacocks

Two plump peacocks perched up high, overlooking the room. Neither was the usual colour of peacocks: one was blood red with deep blue and emerald green markings and the other was sapphire blue with rich red and green markings. I was walking past and looked up to see them sitting there as though on guard. I stopped awhile, admiring their beauty, before walking on.

issues

I was walking through a city mall, outside in the sunshine. I saw a tall slender woman with dark hair who I thought was very beautiful and extremely stylish. Another woman, her twin, was preparing to perform a show. She must not have been an identical twin as she has lighter hair, a mid-brown colour, and a more tawny complexion, though she was just as tall. As I passed her, she looked into my face - a moment - and then I kept walking. I decided to go back and watch the show so I went up to the stage where there were high bar stools placed around, pulled one out and sat. I understood that she and her sister were from a very wealthy family and the first sister was adorned by her wealth but the second sister used her wealth to change the world. I then saw an interview with her, projected onto a screen; she was sitting with her girlfriend, a petite young woman with blue eyes and freckles and they were openly affectionate.
Next, I was in a communal bathroom in the building where I was living. I spoke with the woman who is the Manager of the building that I actually live in. I left the building and then turned back having forgotten something in my apartment. At the front door, I scrambled to find my key but I couldn't find anything like it on the key ring. Finally, I just tried any old key and the door opened. Inside were four young women sitting on the couch and a fifth young woman standing in the bedroom, looking scared to see me. I felt that the fifth girl was my niece or a charge. They were all stoned and I was angry. I shooed them all out except the standing girl who I berated.
Next, to vent my anger, I walked outside into the city and stumbled upon a very small cinema showing confrontational films. I took a seat at the back and soon other people came in. Someone passed me a pair of eye glasses which put on for a moment and then removed, not needing to wear them. I realised that they belonged to my friend who I could see sitting a few rows in front, leaning forward, attentive to the film. She was featured in the film, speaking out in favour of nudity and acceptance of various confrontational issues. Her glasses were coming apart - the arm away from the lens frame - and I decided to fix them. I tried to simply tighten the screw but it popped out and so did a tiny spring. I picked up the spring and the screw to reinsert them, but they jumped out of my fingers. Over the next few minutes, the spring kept changing shape, uncoiling, coiling up the wrong way, falling under the seat and so on and so forth, making it impossible to fix the glasses. Finally I couldn't find either the screw or the spring and asked someone to pass them to me but what they gave me was an enormous light blue screw, a matching bolt and a pin - nothing suitable to mend the glasses. I woke up.

kidnapped

I was kidnapped by a married couple, much like a couple I know in waking life. They took me from where I was camped with many other people and, after a time, we drove away up the coast. I gathered that the original camping site was somewhere around Bellingen and we were heading toward Queensland. We stopped at a service station so they could get some petrol and food. Whilst they were paying, I tried to tell a man, quietly, that I had been kidnapped; I asked for his help. I could see that he didn't believe me and walked away. Outside, walking back to the car, I felt cold, poorly dressed for the oncoming night. I saw a woman walk toward me dressed in long red velvet robes. She raised her eyebrows but I wasn't sure if she was suspicious of us, or merely commenting on my state of dress - I was disheveled and underdressed. The kidnapper woman pulled at my arm and shoved me into the car and we drove off until we reached a beach further up the coast. The couple seemed to be walking thin line between being kind and being cruel. They gave me some food to eat and we sat on the shore, looking at the moon and the land across the sea, which seemed to be lit up by sunlight and glowed with warmth, while we sat here in the dark and cold. A few days later, we were in a room with a few other people. The couple addressed me by a fictitious name. A woman that I knew when she was a girl came in spoke with the couple but slipped me a note which I hid under the piece of paper I was writing on. I could see that she recognised me and knew that something was terribly amiss. I put both pieces of paper in my handbag and put it aside to read later when the opportunity arose. There seemed to be pages and pages of paper stuffed into my bag and I tried to push it down so as not to arouse the kidnappers' suspicion. Meanwhile, the kidnapper man fell asleep and another man came in carrying precious stones and jewels. He lay them out on a low table, spreading them with his palm, until the table glittered with stones. The kidnapper woman seemed enthralled and even benevolent for a moment while her husband was asleep. She allowed me to scoop up beautiful stones and hold them in both hands, admiring them for just a moment. They shone brilliantly: lustrous pearls, nuggets of silver, warm pink stones and stones that gleamed with every colour of the rainbow. One stone, a rose quartz, dropped onto the ground and woke the man, but as he woke, I realised that he was both the man sleeping and the man with the stones. I woke.

wild ride

I was a passenger in a car with my partner. We were driving around unfamiliar roads but from the terrain, I assumed that we were somewhere on the coast of NSW around Hat Head. I was busy with sending a text to someone and when I looked up, B had moved into the back seat of the car and the steering wheel was unattended. I could see oncoming traffic and could feel the car speeding up. I desperately tried to move from the passenger seat into the driver's seat but seemed trapped by the seatbelt and the space in which I had to move. I tried to reach the brakes to no avail whilst I was steering the car from my side position - it all felt wrong. We turned a corner, swinging down a street next to a marsh - wild, scrubby trees grew along the bank. Rather than continuing our reckless ride, I steered the car off the road and into a tree, crashing and bringing the car to a sudden halt. I knew that it would look as though I had failed but I felt it was the only thing that I could have done.

caravan

I needed to store a painting and to find another. I went into the backyard behind an old white house. The yard sloped down, away from the house, leading to a lake. It was night time and everything was difficult to see. There was a double-decker caravan parked in the yard - this seemed to be where I lived. I climbed inside the van and then up the internal stairs which were built to one side of the caravan. I knew that I had to get to the upper level where I would be able to find the painting I needed and store the one I was holding. The painting in my arms was primarily black with brightly coloured shapes - pink, blue, red and yellow - like boats, floating around in the darkness. The staircase seemed terribly narrow and I was concerned that my weight and the slope of the yard would mean that the caravan would roll or slide into the lake. The caravan dislodged and began to swing around in wide circles, my weight acting as a pendulum. Eventually, I freed myself, rolling from the van and found someone to help me hammer pegs into the ground, fastening the caravan into place again, as you would a tent.